ZetaTalk: Dictatorshipswritten Nov 6, 2004

The people seem so easily duped and this gang of crooks is the most effective I've seen. It sounds like we're going to be still waiting and
watching as the Bush regime continues into the new year.

It is said that history repeats itself, but this lies in the heart of man who does not cease wanting power over others, control mechanisms that ensure this, and
the accumulation of great wealth for personal gain and to ensure cooperation from others. If the playing field is leveled, these games soon ensue again on
worlds such as Earth where young spirits are learning how to interact with each other, sorting out whether to mature into empathic beings or to remain self
focused. If it is a true statement that history repeats itself, it is also true that no king is safe, as those clawing up the hill to unseat him are never at rest.
Earths recent history includes long running dictatorships, murder by the millions, and countries driven to ruin before change occurs. But where the
dictators desire for power and wealth seem pre-eminent, it is economic issues as a whole that decide the outcome.

In Stalins era 40 million Russians were killed to feed his sense of control and supremacy, and the Gulag lasted longer. By the time communism
collapsed in Russia, the legitimate mode of business in the hands of the communists had been supplanted by the Black Market, a quiet economic
civil war. Germany over-reached and engaged all its neighbors at once, a fatal mistake made by megalomaniacs. Had the reach been shorter, neither
Russia or Britain or the US would have engaged, despite 6 million Jews having been brutally murdered. Where megalomania, unrelenting greed for
domination, was endemic in those directing Hitler, it was many decades of economic deprivation that pressed the people of Germany to cooperate,
in the end a self defeating move.

Britain ruled the waves in past eras, a tiny island inserting its rule in far off places such as India and China, only to lose to such simple forces as
passive resistance in India under Ghandi, where refusal to cooperate as workers won the day, and more recently in Hong Kong because an
economic giant no longer tolerated the pretense. The US achieved independence from Britain via bloodshed, but the inevitable outcome would have
led to this result, in time, the tiny hand of arrogance from a tiny island simply ignored. African nations likewise, invaded because of their resources
and then turned into colonies and eventually into puppet governments, eventually achieved independence by the force of their economic might,
attractive to many. Again, an economic revolution. In South Africa apartheid ran for decades, the black man an essential slave, before economic
pressures from around the world pressed for change.

China remains a communist stronghold, but the ruling elite who in the past purged intellectuals and whose prisons today are filled with political, not
criminal, prisoners, are acquiescing for the sake of economic growth. The giant awakes, and control over the minds and awareness of the massive
populace is weakening as a result. In contrast, North Korea is led by incompetence which has put the country into starvation under the hand of a
dictator who will party until his last countryman is in the grave. This will result in a palace revolution or a scuffle with a neighbor, in either case a
change in leadership. The lack of crops and food stores, an economic issue, will be the deciding factor.

How does this history comfort those under dictatorships in place today, or those slipping into dictatorship as those in the US fear their loss of voting rights
might indicate? If the pole shift is an Opportunity for rebels to emerge, it is likewise an opportunity for palace revolutions or border scuffles, but the
outcome among survivors will be driven by economics, once again, the sword hammered into a plow, by necessity.